When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. Jimi Hendrix
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Making the Invisible Visible
HIV and AIDS are two deadly deceases. Even though it was only discovered a few decades ago, it has been spreading rapidly since. HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. It is a virus that affects the immune system and it causes the body to not be able to fight off other diseases. AIDS stands for Acquired immune deficiency syndrome. HIV escalates to AIDS. AIDS is basically when the immune system is already failing. In Humanities, we are currently discussing how HIV/AIDS victims are being discriminated, however we are only focusing on the discrimination going on in Malaysia. This is important to our community because it is a decease that is spreading rapidly and now the people who are getting it are mainly innocent and the amount of innocent people who are getting it are increasing. This decease impacts the victims, their family and everyone around them. It also impacts all of us. Because if more and more people are getting it and some people aren't educated about it. There will be a higher chance of all of us getting it too. Whilst I was researching this issue. I was surprised at how many people have it. There are huge amounts of people who have it now and it is still spreading! I was also surprised at the amount of discrimination towards the victims. Some victims are being shunned by not only by their community but sometimes even their families. The is also a lack of education about HIV and AIDS. A lot of people don't know about the decease or know how it is spread and are afraid about getting it. At first I was well a little mad about this issue and that we were studying it because I didn't understand about why it was important at all but as we got slightly further into it, I began to understand why so many people voted for it. It is actually an extremely serious issue and it is increasing everyday.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
How to Deal with a Dictator
Dictators are difficult people to deal with, because you can never actually be certain about the dangers or risks of trying to deal with them. Dictators are basically leaders with a lot of power and often tend to misuse it. There are however quite a few ways to deal with a dictator and either end their power or limit it. A dictator who is quite well known was Julius Caesar. He was assassinated therefore he was stopped. However after he was assassinated, a civil war broke out. At the moment, we are dealing with dictators such as Kim Jung Un from North Korea and Bashar al-Asad from Syria. Dealing with a dictator is difficult and often solutions will have consequences. You could deal with a dictator by creating a resistance or something and then limiting their powers bit by bit or you could assassinate them. Most Dictators have different effects on people, there are people who love them such as Julius Caesar, he was loved by many and when he was killed they were outraged and a little confused. They never really thought of him as a dictator, they thought of him as more of a decision maker for them because they were fickled and they were also blinded by some of his great victories. However there are also people who hate them like Bashar al-Asad, who is currently killing his own people, no one is well stupid enough to believe that he should not be stopped.
Some options are creating a resistance, there are always people on the 'inside' who disagree with their leader probably have enough power to get more and more people to think as they do (kind of what the conspirators did). Furthermore they can start getting outside help until the dictators are forced to surrender. However, creating a resistance might be a little too hard, so you could remove the dictators power bit by bit. A few small changes could probably make a HUGE difference. For example, Kim Jung Un is a dictator who has an army that consists of at least 1.2 million people. There could always be at least one soldier who doesn't agree with Kim Jung Un's actions and then he could get some of his friends to agree with him and so on and so on. (It is also how gossip kind of spreads when one person tells another person this and that, eventually the whole school finds out. ) And then maybe they could get enough of the military force against him which really help and then maybe he would step down from his power. Although these idea's are quite logical they won't always work.
However a solution that's most likely never going to fail is assassination. Assassinating a person with so much power is extremely difficult. There are always consequences like when Caesar was killed it caused a civil war. However by assassinating Kim Jung Un or Bashar al-Asad could have a different outcome. Bashar al-Asad is killing his own people so he most likely doesn't have many admirers, therefore if he was killed I don't think the risks would be as high as killing Caesar, but we still don't know what would happen. Or if Kim Jung Un was assassinated, there would be a risk of the people going crazy because they have kind of been trained to all be the same. Kind of like robots and a lot of them look up to him like a father so there is quite a high risk there. Honestly the best thing to do when attempting to deal with a dictator would probably be to come up with an idea that wouldn't bring cause a lot of chaos and have a lot of consequences. If there are none then maybe move on to ideas with a little more at stake. However, whichever decision is chosen there should be a guarantee that a difference will be made.
Some options are creating a resistance, there are always people on the 'inside' who disagree with their leader probably have enough power to get more and more people to think as they do (kind of what the conspirators did). Furthermore they can start getting outside help until the dictators are forced to surrender. However, creating a resistance might be a little too hard, so you could remove the dictators power bit by bit. A few small changes could probably make a HUGE difference. For example, Kim Jung Un is a dictator who has an army that consists of at least 1.2 million people. There could always be at least one soldier who doesn't agree with Kim Jung Un's actions and then he could get some of his friends to agree with him and so on and so on. (It is also how gossip kind of spreads when one person tells another person this and that, eventually the whole school finds out. ) And then maybe they could get enough of the military force against him which really help and then maybe he would step down from his power. Although these idea's are quite logical they won't always work.
However a solution that's most likely never going to fail is assassination. Assassinating a person with so much power is extremely difficult. There are always consequences like when Caesar was killed it caused a civil war. However by assassinating Kim Jung Un or Bashar al-Asad could have a different outcome. Bashar al-Asad is killing his own people so he most likely doesn't have many admirers, therefore if he was killed I don't think the risks would be as high as killing Caesar, but we still don't know what would happen. Or if Kim Jung Un was assassinated, there would be a risk of the people going crazy because they have kind of been trained to all be the same. Kind of like robots and a lot of them look up to him like a father so there is quite a high risk there. Honestly the best thing to do when attempting to deal with a dictator would probably be to come up with an idea that wouldn't bring cause a lot of chaos and have a lot of consequences. If there are none then maybe move on to ideas with a little more at stake. However, whichever decision is chosen there should be a guarantee that a difference will be made.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Assassination
This is the poster that I made with my group that consisted of Natalie, Claire, Cameron and Tem.
Lord Louis Mountbatten was a member of the British Royal Family, Lord Louis Mountbatten, followed in his father’s footsteps when he joined the navy in 1913. Mountbatten was actually a captain at the start of World War II as he commanded destroyers and in 1955, he became the first sea lord. But Mountbatten was mainly known for the key role he took when planning for the Allied invasion of continental Europe.
Julius Caesar was an extremely skillful leader of Rome. He was very ambitious and was becoming too power hungry and wasn't going to stop at any lengths to get what he wanted. With all the power that Caesar had, he was a threat and could potentially cause further damage.
Well, looking at the two assassinations, it is obvious that there was a motive. In these cases, Julius Caesar and Lord Louis Mountbatten both had a lot of power and were both rather important and could potentially become a threat. Caesar was stopping at nothing to get what he wanted and that was power. He was ruthless therefore causing the people who assassinated him feel threatened and that led to them finding a motive to kill him. They were that Caesar would use his powers for evil instead of good therefore causing a lot of corruption and so they were motivated to kill him. Lord Louis Mountbatten was quite important and was part of the Allied Invasion of Continental Europe. He was also part of the royal family and was the commander of the british navy and led destroyers so he was quite a powerful man therefore being an extremely powerful target for the IRA. To them He was a threat because he had quite a lot of power and could’ve ruined their plans of becoming an independent country. Looking at these cases, it seems like people are assassinated because they are powerful and influential and are becoming a threat. Is assassination justifiable? Well in some situations yes. There are quite a few ways to approach some situations but sometimes assassination seems necessary and is justifiable. I think that Caesar's death can be looked at in may different ways on wether it was justifiable or not but I think that it was. Caesar was becoming a little too powerful for his own good and was also easily manipulated and flattered and was also gullible. Also those flaws caused him to be a rather weak leader. Some believed that Caesar posed as a threat to Rome and the Romans and the only way to make sure that Rome was going to be safe was if they took down Caesar, because he was basically a dictator and had all the people's affections and was extremely influential. Caesar had gotten a point where no matter how much people would try to persuade him to give up some of his power, it probably wouldn't have worked therefore the safety of Rome and the Romans could only be ensured by his assassination. However, I believe that the assassination of Lord Louis Mountbatten was not justifiable. He wasn't the only man with such power. There were quite a few other men who had the same amount of power, perhaps some even more. His death also didn't really help the IRA with much, it wasn't an important event for them to be more successful. And it really wasn't successful because to this day, North Ireland is still not an independent country of its own, clearly showing that the assassination of Lord Louis Mountbatten was not justifiable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)